Beilein had just taken the reins of a Mountaineer program in 2002 that had lost 20 of 28 games, including an embarrassing 92-65 defeat at Pitt when freshman guard Jonathan Hargett notoriously tried to bounce the ball off the backboard and dunk it - against the entire Panther team in a half-court setting!
That was certainly one of the low moments in the program’s proud history, and while Mountaineer fans were wondering what Beilein was going to do with Hargett and some of the players he was inheriting, his No. 1 focus was making sure incoming recruit Pittsnogle was going to follow through on his commitment to attend West Virginia University.